Haggisboy
14-10-2006, 10:04 AM
Midway through The Grudge 2 moviegoers might find themselves peering into the blackness around their feet and hoping they’ll find the eyes of a pasty-faced ghost staring back at them – anything to spare them the agony of watching this travesty through to the end.
Director Takashi Shimizu, who also shares a co-writing credit for this mess with Stephen Susco, seems to think that simply rehashing the frights from the original will suffice, all the while clearly forgetting that what made the original work was not knowing what was going to happen. In the sequel, there’s no pretense of originality. Having established both how and why the hauntings worked in the original, he simply follows the formula here with yawn-inducing results.
As if openly admitting he doesn’t have enough material here to capably fill a feature length movie, Shimizu and Susco stretch the story over three threadbare plots, none of which seem fully realized. The hauntings and ghostly attacks not only all follow blatantly telegraphed cues, but most of them are complete rehashes from the original – girl hides under bed covers, only to find ghost there playing footsie; girl hides in closet only to find pasty-faced tyke meowing at her; you know the drill.
Picking up where the first movie left off, Amber Tamblyn, in the role of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sister, flies to Japan ostensibly to bring her hospitalized sis back stateside, only to become embroiled in the still growing Grudge-O-Mania being wrought by the powdery spiritual entities unleashed in the first movie. Along the way the story line jumps around between that of schoolgirls studying at a Japanese-based American school, and a family that moves into an old greystone apartment complex in Chicago. The film spends the rest of its time jumping back and forth between the three plots, each doing their best to confuse and bore the audience to sleep until the final “great” revelation that all three story lines are interconnected. Woo-hoo!…….. snore.
If there’s any justice in this world, Takashi Shimizu will find himself visited at night by the pasty-faced spirits of movie goers everywhere screaming for their money back.
Give this one a pass.
Director Takashi Shimizu, who also shares a co-writing credit for this mess with Stephen Susco, seems to think that simply rehashing the frights from the original will suffice, all the while clearly forgetting that what made the original work was not knowing what was going to happen. In the sequel, there’s no pretense of originality. Having established both how and why the hauntings worked in the original, he simply follows the formula here with yawn-inducing results.
As if openly admitting he doesn’t have enough material here to capably fill a feature length movie, Shimizu and Susco stretch the story over three threadbare plots, none of which seem fully realized. The hauntings and ghostly attacks not only all follow blatantly telegraphed cues, but most of them are complete rehashes from the original – girl hides under bed covers, only to find ghost there playing footsie; girl hides in closet only to find pasty-faced tyke meowing at her; you know the drill.
Picking up where the first movie left off, Amber Tamblyn, in the role of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sister, flies to Japan ostensibly to bring her hospitalized sis back stateside, only to become embroiled in the still growing Grudge-O-Mania being wrought by the powdery spiritual entities unleashed in the first movie. Along the way the story line jumps around between that of schoolgirls studying at a Japanese-based American school, and a family that moves into an old greystone apartment complex in Chicago. The film spends the rest of its time jumping back and forth between the three plots, each doing their best to confuse and bore the audience to sleep until the final “great” revelation that all three story lines are interconnected. Woo-hoo!…….. snore.
If there’s any justice in this world, Takashi Shimizu will find himself visited at night by the pasty-faced spirits of movie goers everywhere screaming for their money back.
Give this one a pass.